Ep 11: Celebrity Cultures w/ Samita Nandy

Ep 11: Celebrity Cultures w/ Samita Nandy

In this episode, we learn (via sniffles) that T-Bitty is sick and that if Cales were to study a celebrity, she would place her in a test-tube and probably forget to feed her like the aloe plant sitting shrivelled on her window sill.

Thankfully, Tanya and Caleigh got to sit down with Samita Nandy, who runs the Centre for Media and Celebrity studies, to chat about the study of celebrity cultures and how celebrities themselves can be understood as texts and systems of signs that carry meaning, shaped not only by their own actions but by the contributing contexts that media and audiences build around them. We stretch back to the Greek era to look at Fame’s origin story and unravel the semiotics between Canadian celebrity culture and Hollywood’s Wild West frontier. If you’ve ever wanted to pull apart the nuts and bolts of the “Dream Machine” that turns humans into immortals, this is the episode for you.

P.S. we recorded our intro & outro in Tanya’s haunted apartment, so whoever guesses the exact point at which her ghost decided to chime in wins a prize.